WRIGHTIA is starting to have a site:

• www.wrightia.com

...with some alternative entry points:

• www.wrightia.eu


• www.wrightia.pt

Apple to use Intel Chips? (via Yahoo! News)

Report: Apple Explores Use of Intel Chips - Yahoo! News

BBC NEWS: one-inch hard drives holding 60Gb...

BBC NEWS | Technology | Tiny drives set for space boost: "Hitachi's work means we could see one-inch hard drives holding 60Gb instead of up to 10Gb currently."

Why OpenVMS Hasn't Faded Away?

Why OpenVMS Hasn't Faded Away? I asked myself this just two weeks ago after a consulting intervention arround WebServices on top of Axis + Tomcat running on top of OpenVMS.

Ok, I had already worked - just for a couple of months - on VMS some (quite some!) years ago: it was quite nice... but did not look THAT much nice.

Now I know! =:o)


[Programming]

First video game written in Ant

Jon Aquino's Mental Garden: "Presenting the world's first video game written in Ant."

Just when I thought I had seen everything...


[Java]

Replacing finalizers with phantom references

Replacing finalizers with phantom references. A very nice tip via JProfiler.


[Java]

Fink - Unix tools for Mac OS X

Fink: "We modify Unix software so that it compiles and runs on Mac OS X ('port' it) and make it available for download as a coherent distribution."

How "The Mind Electric" built sucessful software...

And now a methodology to assist you on your software business:

Graham Glass, of Mind Electric fame, the man behind Electric XML, GLUE and Gaia (now Webmethods Fabric), explains the methodology he used to develop such great products right here, here, here and here, and... lets hope the series goes on.

Again... this is not a talent replacer.

[Programming]

How far can a methodology go?

Via Joel, Katie Lucas on methodologies :

And at the core of RUP is a small area where you have to use OO design talents.... if you don't have them, it's like having a methodology for running the 100m.

'Step 1: write about running really fast. Step 2: Go and draw a plan of the racetrack. Step 3: go and buy really tight lycra shorts. Step 4: run really, really, really fast. Step 5: cross line first'

I was never able to say this better.

Some people keep dreaming that methodologies or other tools are going to be able to replace talent. That is not going to happen in the near future. Tools and methodologies CAN assist talent but CAN NOT replace it. If you believe otherwise, you might be on track to waste your money instead of investing it.

[Programming]

SPAM: Checking if an ip address is blacklisted

Feet up! - dev/python/Blacklist-checking.html: "How do you check if an ip address is blacklisted"

It's sort of easy, you reverse the address (say it was 1.2.3.4), and append the blacklist's address (say blacklist.example.net), and then do a dns lookup (of 4.3.2.1.blacklist.example.net). If the address is not found, chances are the blacklist hasn't heard of them, otherwise they're probably scum.

The code is in Python, but any one should understand the idea.
(Also note the unit starting at the "if __name__ ..." statement.)

[Security]